Think tank fuels changes for homeless

Rachel Jensen, who is the co-founder of Girls Think Tank, stands with the bins at the Transitional Storage Center. The bins give homeless people a place to store their personal belongings.
— Eduardo Contreras

Rachel Jensen, who is the co-founder of Girls Think Tank, stands with the bins at the Transitional Storage Center. The bins give homeless people a place to store their personal belongings.
— Eduardo Contreras

Years before she cofounded Girls Think Tank, a San Diego nonprofit dedicated to bringing basic services to the homeless, Rachel Jensen founded a collegiate chapter of the National Organization for Women at Florida State University. She taught street law at a public high school in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the prosecutor at international criminal courts in Tanzania and the Netherlands.

Jensen’s long list of human-rights activities has taken her across the country and around the world, but her philanthropic philosophy is short and simple. Do for others because you can.

“One of the more consistent themes I grew up with was the very strong value of giving back,” said Jensen, 38. “My family was very involved with the church, and the message was that if you’ve got what you need, it is your duty to make sure that other people do, too.”

When Jensen moved to San Diego in 2005, duty called again. On the commute from her home in Ocean Beach to the downtown law offices of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd (where she is a partner), Jensen saw the same homeless man sitting at a bus stop on Rosecrans Street. Every day, there he was. She started bringing him water, but that didn’t feel like enough. The same went for the homeless people walking the streets of downtown. They weren’t getting what they needed, so Jensen got to work.

In the fall of 2006, Jensen sent an email to a few female friends, many of them attorneys like herself. The subject line read, “Girls Think Tank.” Her pitch? Let’s stop talking about office politics and bad boyfriends and do something. Less than two months after their first meeting at Jensen’s house, the members of Girls Think Tank hit the streets of the East Village to hand out winter-survival backpacks.

Nearly eight years and many hundreds of backpacks later, Girls Think Tank is a little bigger and a lot busier. Their volunteers run a legal referral and advocacy clinic. They work with community partners that include the United Way of San Diego County, SDG&E and Target. The San Diego Housing Commission contracted the group to operate the downtown Transitional Storage Center, where the homeless can safely store their belongings so they can look for jobs, attend classes or get the social services they need.

Then there is the group’s Basic Dignity Campaign, a years-long struggle to give the homeless access to clean drinking water and restrooms. After more than three years of working with members of the homeless community, attending meeting after meeting and jumping through assorted administrative hoops, Jensen says it looks like the first facilities should be sometime this year.

It was a long and frustrating battle, but given that Girls Think Tank wasn’t working for the homeless but working with the homeless, giving up was not an option.

“We have been working hand in hand with the homeless community during this process. They go to meetings. They speak in front of the City Council,” Jensen said during an interview at the Transitional Storage Center at 16th and Commercial streets. “So how can you look them in the face and say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t get you a bathroom.’ We really work with the people on the street, and that’s what gives us the force to get things done.”

It doesn’t hurt that Jensen is a bit of a force herself. Whether she was rebooting Florida State’s Women’s Educational and Cultural Center while still a student, or organizing a 2007 World Conference on Japanese Military Slavery years later, Jensen feels most at home when she’s in someone else’s corner.

“I wish I knew how she does it,” said Scott Dreher, a local attorney who has taken on many cases involving the homeless. “Rachel is able to empathize with people and she can multitask enough to accomplish all of these goals. We all have our niches, and Rachel has broadened her niche so she can do more for people than most of us. It’s kind of magical.”

Jensen and her husband, Erin Eldred-Brown, have a young son at home and a baby boy on the way. And there are new arrivals on the Girls Think Tank front, too.

On May 1, the Transitional Storage Center is opening in a bigger spot at 16th and K streets. The new location is owned by the San Diego Housing Commission, with financial support coming from the City of San Diego and private donors that include the Anthony Robbins Foundation, Jerome’s and Ace Parking. The Girls Think Thank’s yearly fundraiser is on May 31, and the long-awaited new public restrooms should open later this year.

For Girls Think Tank, there will always be more work to do. For Jensen, that’s where the magic is. “Litigating can be tough work, and the human-rights work I do with Girls Think Tank replenishes my spirit,” Jensen said. “It’s one of my greatest pleasures.”